OVERVIEW

The City of Eureka is seeking proposals from highly experienced urban planning and design consultants to update the City’s Zoning Code and the Implementation Plan (IP) of the Local Coastal Program, as well as to complete the necessary associated CEQA review. The Zoning Code shall be fully formatted and completed to a level that it is ready to be adopted by City Council. The IP shall be fully formatted and completed to a level that it is ready to be adopted by City Council and certified by the California Coastal Commission.

BACKGROUND

With a population of around 27,000, Eureka is not a “big city.” However, Eureka is the largest incorporated city in a five-county region (Del Norte, Trinity, Humboldt, Mendocino, and Lake). That region constitutes substantially more land area than the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island combined. Eureka is the only city in that five-county region with buildings over three stories, which is likely the reason that Eureka’s Downtown has the highest “job density” in the region according to the US Census Bureau. Eureka is also home to the largest hospital in the region, the only commercial waterfront, the largest industrial waterfront, the largest concentration of lodging, and by far the largest continuous urban grid. In addition, while Eureka contains only 20% of Humboldt County’s overall population, the City generates 55% of the County’s overall sales tax and is home to the largest concentration of jobs in the County. So, while Eureka is not a “big city,” it plays the role of “the big city” in the north coast region.

The historic development pattern of Eureka is based on the early establishment of an uninterrupted urban grid with 300-foot blocks and alleys that pass through the center of nearly every block. From the 1860s through the 1950s, the commercial downtown was densely developed with three to five-story buildings, and the residential areas were developed with a rich diversity of construction types, sizes, setbacks, and heights. The City was forward thinking in the establishment of wide sidewalks that accompany nearly every street in the grid, creating a city that is very walkable relative to many other similarly-size cities. While Caltrans’s conversion of 4th and 5th Streets into Highway 101 severely diminished pedestrian connectivity between Downtown and the residential portion of the City, and while the industrial waterfront has experienced dramatic changes since its earliest days, the City’s core grid and historic development patterns primarily remain intact. Unfortunately, the City’s strict proscriptive Euclidean zoning code has proven to be the most substantial obstacle to the construction of new high-quality development and has been the primary source of deviations from the City’s historic mixed-use development patterns.

The City’s currently-adopted zoning code has not been comprehensively overhauled since the time of its initial adoption in the late 1960s. At the moment of its adoption, the 1960s code was out of alignment with the development in Eureka that already existed at the time and led to new development that was detrimentally-inconsistent with the City’s previously-existing development pattern. It appears that the zoning code adopted in the 1960s was based on standards that were intended for suburban subdivisions, while Eureka was largely built-out at the time and needed a custom code specific to the unique conditions of Eureka. For instance, over 65% of Eureka’s housing units were constructed prior to 1959 and the vast majority of the City’s street network had been constructed by that time, which means that Eureka needed a zoning code that emphasized infill and development of vacant/underutilized properties. Instead, the 1960s code enforced new standards that were out-of-place and that never served Eureka in a functional or logical way. For example, each year the City turns away home owners that are seeking to build additions onto their homes, despite the fact that they are seeking nothing more than to duplicate the design of the homes that surround them. Many of the development styles and patterns that were constructed prior to the 1960s and that form the basic fabric of what makes Eureka the city that it is were made non-conforming by the adoption of the 1960’s zoning code. To complicate matters further, the code has grown increasingly complex and inconsistent through decades of minor text amendments that were not drafted to seamlessly integrate and be consistent with the existing code. As a result, the code has drifted further from the City’s historic development pattern.

Like most communities in California, Eureka is experiencing a shortage of housing at all income levels. Eureka is especially hard hit by this trend since the City is almost completely built-out and has little to no room for expanding the City’s residential zone districts. According to the City’s 2013 Housing Element and recent housing projections associated with the City’s General Plan Update, the maximum potential growth of new single-family residential homes is not likely to exceed a few hundred. The City has conducted extensive analysis of opportunities for annexation and no meaningful opportunities for territorial expansion are viable. The City is surrounded by fully built-out residential subdivisions and coastal wetlands, which means that there is nowhere for the City to expand in order to create new housing. Accordingly, the City’s recent analysis of vacant and underutilized parcels within City limits shows that the City’s greatest opportunity for residential growth is through the construction of multi-story buildings in the Downtown and Old Town areas. Such development is envisioned to consist of multi-story buildings with retail on the ground floor and residential units on the upper floors. While the current zoning code technically allows such development, the obstacles presented in the code are so great that new construction of this type is effectively impossible (despite the fact that there are dozens of such buildings that were constructed prior to the 1960s). This is a problem that needs to be rectified in the new zoning code.

Another major flaw of the current zoning code is the lack of flexibility. For instance, while the code includes a massive use list with over 635 listed uses, staff regularly encounters problems with new business types that are not listed. While “telegraph offices” are permitted in multiple zones, “yoga studios” are not listed. This is problematic because of the strict prescriptive nature of the code and because the Coastal Commission does not always support or encourage exceptions. Likewise, the language for Planned Unit Developments is very weak and restrictive; there is little to no flexibility for modifying setbacks, and floor area ratios are remarkably small with no built-in flexibility.

In 2013, the City hired the consulting firm ESA to draft a new General Plan Update and Local Coastal Plan update, which is scheduled for adoption by the City Council in August of 2018. Through a series of City Council public meetings held in 2016 and 2017, it became evident that the City Council was seeking a modern General Plan that deviated significantly from the past several General Plans and that embraced the original density and diversity of development in Eureka prior to the 1960s. A substantial number of new policies have been preliminarily approved by Council, including many policies that promote infill development and a return to Eureka’s historic development pattern. This new direction established by City Council means that a substantial amount of work will be required to update the Zoning Code and Coastal Implementation Plan so that it will be consistent with the new General Plan and Local Coastal Plan. It became evident that creating a new, modern zoning code would be more efficient and effective than amending the existing zoning code. Accordingly, City staff began drafting the initial outline of an entirely new zoning code in January 2017. This new “Staff Draft” is based on best-practice zoning codes that have recently been adopted and is not at all based on the 1960s Eureka zoning code.

The primary source document for the Staff Draft is the development code of the City of Livermore, with secondary influence from the zoning codes of Azusa and Riverside, California. Accordingly, the organization and general philosophical underpinnings of the Staff Draft have been established, but the document still has a long way to go. An outline of the most recent version of the Staff Draft can be found in Attachment B and a copy of the Staff Draft Zoning Map can be found in Attachment C. Interested Consultants may request a copy of the Staff Draft on or after November 1, 2017 by contacting the City’s Zoning Code Project Manager as identified at the front of the RFP.